Relentless Inquiry

Just came back from filling several large bins and a large garbage can with nice fresh free compost at the Sunnyvale recycling center. It's all plant-based, so it just smelled earthy, rather than having that extra zing of critter-poop-enhanced compost. I was impressed at the fineness of the grade– some of it might benefit from screening, but most was very loose and dirt-like, with few clumps. The pile steamed gently when one took a shovelful from the center. Yay.

I'm pleased to have had little difficulty wrangling the bins in and out of the car. I wouldn't have wanted to do even ONE more bin, though. Bonus points for the cute latino guys filling up the pickup truck, who were clearly impressed that I could lift the bins after they were filled. 😉

The whole trip reminded me fondly of going to get sawdust by the pickup-truck load as a kid, to use for bedding for the goats. The sawdust piles were big as houses, and there were alternate layers of steaming hotness too strong to plunge one's hand into for more than a few seconds, and layers still frozen from a winter or three ago. Way way way fun to play on– just don't trigger a sawdustvalanche on oneself. I got buried past my waist once, was a bit scary getting out, and I had to dig for quite a while to find one of my shoes that didn't come out of the hole. I'm sure lawyers wouldn't let kids have that much fun nowadays.